Between the Waves

Between the Waves

Heat waves and lake waves tag team today

Each generating supply and demand

The baking body craves baptism by immersion

While the freezing frame crawls to the sandy shores

Looking skyward like an Egyptian magician

For the rays of Ra.

They play off each other

They play with each other

And we are caught betwixt the two

Like children tossed to and fro in “London Bridges”

We rather like ‘falling down’ here in the space between.

The amphibian life of a Michigan summer

Makes all the wiles of winter bearable

Forgotten like the pangs of childbirth

When contractions give way to the newborn cry

This rapturous new birth declares:

--Like a portal from anesthesia to amnesia--

‘the old is gone the new has come’.

The mitten-life is for the hearty and foolhardy 

With a penchant for the pendulum

Weather moving back and forth

--Like mood swings--

Enchanting us, bewitching us to annually

break our February oaths to flee the northern curse

Only to renew our vows mid-June, high heat

Caught, willfully, between the waves.